Pirate The World - Online Adventure Game

i know, and i appreciate it...just wanted you to know that it did take the gold from my account...i wasn't upset about being attacked, it's all in good fun...and you deserve to get what you rightfully plundered... plus, if admins feel like checking it out, they now know who to check...

add me to the list of pirates that have been attacked and nothing was lost even though my log says otherwise.

zairareid Success 25657 Lost Sep 10 14:18:33

Once again I didn't lose anything, though this time I was sitting perfectly still and lagged out while trying to attack someone else.

Well - this happened to me yesterday. Ozwizard came and hit me for 14k per my log, but I got to hold onto the cash - well at least for a few minutes or so till ratpatrol popped by and took it and a bit more.....
Still - I've had 2 more upgrades since then so maybe next time.

i think this is a big problem because it causes more gold to be in the system than it really has which causes the cash out to be soooo much higher than it really is..... atleast for those who cash out that is

What i'm about to say isnt really probable in this situation, but still possible.. I learnt about it a few simesters ago in my Data class, so im a bit rusty, but i'll try to explain in the best way i can..........................................
It's got something to do with the basic integrity of the database..
Pretty much...
Pirate A has 0 gold
Pirate B has 110 000gold
5:01:04:05pm: Pirate A sees Pirate B and attacks him, invoking script A, and winning 50 000 gold
5:01:04:21pm: Script A saves Pirate A's gold balance as 50 000
5:01:04:24pm: Pirate B finds 3 gold on an island, running script B
5:01:04:43pm: Script A saves Pirate B's new gold balance as 60 000
5:01:04:57pm: because script b began to run when pirate B had 110 000gold, it thinks pirate b still has that amount, and so saves pirate b's balance as 110 003.

this could also be a reason for missing moves (player moves milliseconds before moves are added... hence some say not to move for 5 mins before and 5mins after reset).. worth looking into i guess.. Maybe database/ row locking is needed to ensure data integrity?

Good one Bob - it could well be that, and I'm sure the programmer(s) will be able to deal to that kind of timing hole, if it is the cause. Timing holes like that are much more likely to occur when performance is slow (as it has been) as the "hole" is MUCH bigger on a long transaction.
I have seen problems like this practically stop completely by speeding up the machine or code.
I was frantically clicking when Oz hit me the first time, so you could be right. However I was away chatting (with high fame - duh!) when I was hit the second time, so not surprising I lost the lot then.
So - click like mad and maybe it will save your cash??????

Whatever the cause, discussing locking stategies is boring as hell - I'm off to attack someone...

It happened to me last night too. Didn't notice it until later though. I compared it to my outbound attacks and i was definitely lagging when it happened. I attacked somebody waited a long time and 2 seconds after the attack that should have took my gold but didn't my outbound attack completed.

I am wondering if this lag is becoming so much worse cause we are getting so many ships close to sinking and the way the script accesses the database is causing it. I am just taking a guess here, but it seems that when you attack someone a check of the database occurs to see if the pirate was inactive for 7 days, and if true, then checks how many attacks were successful since the 7 day mark was reached, causing a search of the database for the hits. Maybe what should be done is to have the inactive day counter flip at each reset, that way in the database you have a location with a yes or no in it for each pirate. If the counter says yes for inactive, then the second location is accessed for get the current number of hits since inactivity and if successful, compares it to 100 and if not, writes the new number to that location. That way the number of accesses to the database would be greatly reduced and hopefully reduce the lag factor, if this is indeed how the game currently works. Just a suggestion for the admin and programmer.

This time I didn't get the gold it said I won. One second after I hit SN33K, he hit me and I lost the 5k but never received the 15k

Outgoing
SN33K Success 14815 Gained Sep 19 18:12:26

Incoming:
SN33K Success 5423 Lost Sep 19 18:12:27